Читать книгу The Women Who Make Our Novels онлайн

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And the only hope of getting a man who has got “outside” to accept the creed and reënter the fellowship is to convince him that only by so doing can he achieve freedom, that only by binding himself to the unwritten law can he become “eternally free.” If you can make him see that, you have salvaged him for society. As the surest way to make a man see a thing is to let him discover it for himself we have invented prisons. Do not be deceived by the stupid notion that prisons are to punish men or even to protect society from their evil depredations. Prisons are the result of a deep, very sensible, entirely unshakeable piece of knowledge which we collectively possess, namely, that the man who has put himself beyond the pale must himself bring himself within it again. To that end we enclose him in four symbolic brick walls. We give him no physical or bodily escape. And so, after a time, he makes a mental escape and finds himself still essentially free, though physically in jail! So at last he comes to understand and accept the paradox that he can be free in no other way—ever.